The Wheel Of Emotion

Jeff McHugh

In the planning phase of a daily show, we encourage hosts to discuss any personal dilemmas that they may be facing and to share stories from real life that can become content on the air.

The best shows go one level deeper than that and discuss the emotion involved in those stories. Yes, we are talking about our feelings!

Good stories are always well-received, and including what was going through a person’s head or heart as the tale unfolds can make the story funnier, more dramatic and stickier.

Here’s an example: 

Howie Drummond of “Howie, Monica and Jake” on KUPL in Portland once crashed the stage at the Grammy Awards.  

This was when Jon Stewart was hosting in 2000 and Howie was on Magic FM in Colorado Springs. A couple of days before the awards, Howie declared on-air that he was going to the awards and that he would crash the stage.

That Sunday, the show resumed after a commercial break. Howie marched authoritatively from the back of the room, crossed some barriers, got on stage and walked right into the camera frame with Jon Stewart.

I asked Howie if he was nervous and he said no, but that he was embarrassed.  “I got to the microphone and realized that I had not considered what I was going to say.”

Howie told Jon “congratulations from Howie at Magic FM” and was simultaneously arrested and an instant hero in his hometown. Don’t you agree that the funniest part of the story is what Howie was thinking and feeling?

As an aid to your own storytelling preparation, here is a graphic of Plutchik’s Wheel, developed by psychologist Robert Plutchik as an aid in understanding how emotions evolve from low levels (annoyance) to high level (rage.)

Try keeping this “wheel of emotions” in your line of site as you prepare content for your show and see if it helps your story when you tell it on the air.